


i would suffer the nature of rain for you baby

by ilovethisfeeling



Series: we were gods before this [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-14 05:50:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8000884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovethisfeeling/pseuds/ilovethisfeeling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks of Poe. Poe who is bright and shining, who laughs wildly and smiles softly, who collects embers in his hands and stokes them until they are tiny furnaces, shining as bright as he does. He thinks of Poe in the torture chamber, strapped and leashed, thinks of how his mind had sparkled with shock and awe but how he had never, not once, even when Kylo had pushed and pulled and ransacked his very being, grown cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

Kylo is vibrating with worry.

He can’t stay still, pacing the corridors, skulking in the shadows, panic and nerves written clear in the taught line of his lips and in the deep crevices on his forehead. The General has long since stopped trying to placate him - not that she has ever been one for soothing touches and murmured reassurances. The General - his mother - never knew how to calm him when he’d had a bad dream or kiss away the pain that came with growing up, she was born a princess, taught politics and charm from a young age and chose the life of the army, or war, of command and ruthless pragmatism. She loved him (Kylo knows she still does, though it’s a jaded sort of love now, a love that has withered and frayed and is kept together through dedication and willpower) but she never knew how to care for a child.

In many ways, she still doesn’t.

Chewie growls at him every now and again, attempting to calm the nervous adrenaline that pumps like acid through his veins. It helps a little but mostly it serves to remind him that _everything is wrong_. 

Poe is _gone_.

His comm-line is down and they have no way of knowing where the hell he is. A routine recon mission. That’s what this was meant to be - a routine mission with little to no possibility of anything going wrong. Except something evidently has and now he can’t feel Poe at all. 

The tentative link they’ve been cultivating between them, is all but eradicated and Kylo can tell that anything emotions he feels through the Force are his own imagination, not Poe reaching out across the galaxy to him.

In many ways, he’s grateful for that because the only things he feels in the Force are panic and fear and his own paranoia.

Kylo feels like he’s drowning, the oxygen in the room doesn’t reach his lungs and his vision is blurred with worry and unshed tears because Poe is everything that’s good in the world - he is the calm before the storm, the yellow sky that heralds a hurricane and the still that comes before a tsunami. He _could_ be terrible in so many ways, Kylo knows that well enough, knows the tactical ruthlessness that lies beneath his cheery exterior. He could so easily be terrible in the way his mother is terrible, in the way that Vader was terrible… but the fact is, the cheery exterior isn’t a lie. Poe has a capacity for kindness and for forgiveness that is unparalleled - he welcomes and cheers and _tries_ so hard to make sure that his squadron makes it back together and alive. He mourns the deaths of everyone who dies for the Resistance, carries their names in his bones, works harder to make sure they didn’t die in vain.

Kylo knows the darkness that dwells deep in the marrow of Poe’s bones, understands it like it is family, but the difference between him and Poe that Poe doesn’t let that darkness, that manifests in a desire to win no matter the cost and a need to prove himself over and over again control him.And now… now Kylo is completely lost in the Resistance, has been since Poe’s tracker stopped sending signals back to base. 

“Kylo,” The General’s voice cuts through his turmoil as easy as his saber can slice through skin and bone. He turns to face her, dark eyes, wild and unhinged in a way that she hasn’t seen since he first landed on the base, and it scares her, though she doesn’t let it register on her face, keeps her stance straight, her eyes clear. “Go back your rooms - we’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.” She means it kindly, worries that he won’t be able to see that she just wants him safe, away from the heightened emotions that are radiating off them all. It’s not in her nature to be soft, but this is not a time for softness. They are in a war, and she needs to get Poe back, not just because he is the best she has, not even for Kylo who, in Poe’s presence, becomes more like the boy she knew with freedom and a thirst for more in his eyes. She needs Poe back because whether she likes it or not (and the logical, tactical side of her - the side that has kept the Resistance _alive_ \- does not) Poe has become family, a friend almost, and she’d miss him just as dearly as Kylo would.

Kylo has a habit of making her best and brightest… uncomfortable, and the shift in the atmosphere when he leaves (with a dramatic swish of his cloak and a pained expression marring his face) is tangible. Her heart splinters in that moment because she _knows_ she’s losing her son all over again, but maybe she can bring back the person who found him, buried deep and forgotten in the fractures that create Kylo Ren.

With a small sigh, Leia turns back to her team, jaw set, eyes clear and bright and brimming with determination. 

She notices but doesn’t stop Luke from slipping out of the room.

Kylo senses Luke - his uncle, the Jedi-Master-turned-runaway-turned-broken man, before he sees him. He lurks (though that isn’t the right word. Luke never lurks, just waits silently in the peripherals until the right moment) in the shadows of the training room that Kylo has retreated to, unable to face his room that _feels_ so strongly of Poe it hurts. He doesn’t acknowledge him for several long moments, lets his fear and his anguish wash through him like a tidal wave.

Luke moves before he realises that he’s falling, knees giving out underneath him, and then Luke is sinking down with him, holding him tightly like he would a child. Comforting in the way that only family can be sometimes. “This is the most you’ve felt in a long time.” Luke says at last, his tone thoughtful, cautious maybe. 

They are both out of their depth, neither knowing where they stand with each other, not truly. Kylo looks at his uncle and sees the man who he had tried to trust and who had in turn failed him, too focussed on the other children in his care to notice the encroaching darkness in his nephew’s mind. Luke looks at the man, this man who has been twisted unrecognisably and is now trying to untie the knots that riddle his mind and sees the boy who he used to be. Sees Ben in the gaps in his psyche, feels the boy that at one point had been his to protect through the Force. It’s complicated and messy and Luke still wants to protect, but now… Now he realises that maybe he doesn’t know how. 

“I _need_ him _safe_ ,” Kylo manages at last, voice broken and scared and splintering into jagged spikes. 

“You knew the risks of his job, the chances that he takes… You know he wouldn’t give this up,” Luke counters, the arms wrapped around his nephew’s torso are solid and sure, a stark contrast to the uncertainty that tinges his words. Kylo is reminded of Finn - who has always spoken to Kylo with a kind of peace and sureness that would fool almost anyone, except Kylo can sense the fear (though fear doesn’t fit quite right - Finn isn’t afraid of Kylo, but he does worry that Kylo will turn again, that the peace that Kylo is trying to find will break and they’ll be right back where they started) that hides just beneath the surface. Kylo would reassure Finn that he doesn’t need to worry, but in moments like this, where everything is twisted and shattering, he thinks it’s perhaps best not to give the boy false hope.

“Ben… Kylo.” Luke doesn’t know when he’s more Ben than Kylo. He’s trying his best. 

_Dammit he’s trying his best._

His nephew shudders in his arms and Luke remembers this all too well; a boy frightened of what he might do, of what he might want to do, and yet drawn to the possibilities of endless power. He remembers watching his nephew, drop deeper and deeper into himself, into the Force and he remembers the frustration, the anger that swelled deep his belly that this child, he sister’s and his best friend’s son, welcomed the Dark as much as he yearned for the light. Looking back now, Luke knows that he failed. He couldn’t see past his own emotions, couldn’t understand why a boy born of pure light could shun it so easily. He couldn’t see (or perhaps he simply didn’t want to) the struggle for what it was.

He won’t fail his nephew again. 

He couldn’t do that to Leia. Couldn’t do that to Han’s memory.

They stay like this suspended in stillness and quiet until time begins to lose meaning, until Kylo’s breathing slows, until Luke feels his arms go numb and then they stay like this for a while longer. Eventually though, Kylo shifts, leans forwards, and Luke drops his arms, the space between them growing and shrinking as Kylo collects himself. 

Moments like this, moments of weakness and vulnerability were not allowed in the First Order. The sharp clean lines of the ships, the imposing ever-present shadows, Snoke’s will and presence left no room for touch, for comfort, for rebuilding. Kylo learnt to cope with the constant weariness of his role in the Order. He learnt to shut down emotions that were deemed unworthy. He’d seen himself what happened to pilots, troopers, soldiers, even droids who buckled and cracked under the pressure of being constantly cold. He had punished them himself, bent and frayed their minds until they were shells, not really there anymore except in being. Their minds gone until only the cold remained.

He thinks of Poe. Poe who is bright and shining, who laughs wildly and smiles softly, who collects embers in his hands and stokes them until they are tiny furnaces, shining as bright as he does. He thinks of Poe in the torture chamber, strapped and leashed, thinks of how his mind had sparkled with shock and awe but how he had never, not once, even when Kylo had pushed and pulled and ransacked his very being, grown cold. “He’s so much stronger than I ever realise.” He murmurs at last, Luke doesn’t say a word. “He’ll… if he doesn’t… die, he’ll be okay.” He clings to this thought, hopes beyond hope that he’s correct.

But still.

Still, Poe is out there somewhere in the stars, lost to the Resistance and Kylo is stuck _here_. Unknowing and helpless.

_ He hates it. _

Hates with every inch of his being, it radiates through the Force, glowing hot and angry in a way that it hasn’t since he escaped. Since he found home again. It’s familiar and unfamiliar at the same time in the way that seeing an old acquaintance after years is. It’s an ugly feeling but still, he _feels_ it. Feels the truth and power behind the emotion as real as the day he was reborn in Snoke’s image. Feels the heat under his skin and in the Force, pricking and burning and it would be so easy to fall into it. 

To sink into this heat, this fire, this hell.

He turns, facing his uncle with wide eyes, pain written clear on his features, torment twisted around his spine. Temptation fizzes and cracks in his fingers.

Luke shifts, watching his nephew with careful eyes, cautious and worried. _Control your emotions_ , he wants to say. _Nothing good will come from falling_. But he remembers a boy with sunshine and laughter dancing his eyes making water sing. He remembers a child with fear and panic leashed to his wrists, trying desperately to control what he felt and punishing himself every time he failed. 

He breathes deeply, the words on the tip of his tongue don’t feel entirely right, but he says them anyway, “Balance yourself. You’re allowed to feel your pain, your anger, but remember the quiet. Remember yourself.” He wants to say more, but Kylo is shaking, hands hovering like hummingbirds, he reaches out, clasps his hands over his shoulders, keeps him steady as he looks Kylo directly in the eye. 

Sometimes silence can say more than anyone ever could.


	2. this is nothing to hide

Kylo shifts his stance ever so slightly, a slight step to the left, more a murmur of movement than anything else. His gaze is downcast, arms relaxed at his side, anyone looking would see a living statue and in a way that’s what he’s become. Going through the motions of living, without really connecting to the world outside. 

Right now though, this is different. The tension in the air seems to fizz and channel through him, the way electricity does through trees in a storm. Rey watches him, her breath baited. She’s worried about him, has been for a while, since Poe… her train of thought stops abruptly, like she can’t bring herself to finish it even to herself. (Though really, are her thoughts ever really just her own when she’s living with two Force users? Is anything really private - _sacred_ \- in the Resistance base? She doesn’t know, can’t know what it overheard and what is hers alone. She doesn’t think about it. Can’t think about it for her own sanity.) 

Kylo doesn’t pay her any attention, too busy watching his own shadows to pay her any mind. Or at least, that’s the impression he’s giving off, and maybe, maybe, if she didn’t know better she would have bought it, would have let him continue with this charade. 

Her lightsaber crackles alive. A step to the right, circling, enticing, taunting maybe. She doesn’t think about it, acts on instinct, watches Kylo through narrowed eyes. He looks up, dragging his gaze to the ceiling, breathes out a long hollow sigh. He doesn’t look at her. 

He’s open to attack, and she’s tempted… He wouldn’t have a chance to reach for his own saber - she’s too close - one precise strike and she would have him on his knees, she would win. 

_Except._

Except it’s never that easy with Kylo. She’s only been training with him for a week. (One week and four days since Poe. One week since Kylo appeared in the doorway, watching as she andMaster Skywalker trained. Three days since she understood what he could do. One day since she asked him to teach her. Twelve hours since he accepted.) 

His silence makes her nervous, his stillness is an unwelcome guest at a dinner party, she wants something to fill the quiet, she wants action, movement, anything to cut through the atmosphere. To cut through her own thoughts that are slowing filling her mind, clouding her judgment, making her second guess herself. Master Skywalker is a voice in her head, telling her to focus, to ground herself but how can she do that when she has nothing to connect to other than Kylo who is there in body but not in spirit? She can’t get a read on him. Has tried, but it’s like he’s not in the same galaxy let alone the room. He’s not shielding his mind from her attempts to read him, she genuinely can’t feel his presence in the room at all.

It is just about the most disturbing thing she’s ever felt.

She lunges and it’s then that the lights go out.

Darkness engulfs her, overriding every sense. It fills her completely until she’s drowning in an endless it of nothing. Dimly, Rey realises that she’s dropped her saber, but she can’t bring herself to care. 

She floats in an eclipse of quiet abandon, her memories shifting and twisting and melting until she doesn’t quite know what is hers and what is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’s calm. She’s calm. Slowing slipping and floating and falling and soaring. Her body is stretched beyond it’s limits, everything is too much and not enough, and he’s not sure - _cannot_ be sure - if it’s good or bad.

Maybe it is neither.

Maybe it simply is.

The lack of certainty, the lack of knowledge the fact that everything that she is is slowly being wrenched from her should be bothering. It should be terrifying. 

It isn’t. Somehow… it isn’t.

And now… everything is shifting, fading, until all there is is her and this space, this void, this nothing that fills her with calm and peace and she wonders if he’s dying, if this is death and the void is eternity. If the stretch of oblivion will last or if that too will end and then, if it does, will she too? These thoughts hold little weight, they come and go with the ebb and flow of the Force that pulsates around her. 

She doesn’t even recognise it as the Force, it simply is, too much, too bright, too dark, too light. Everything and nothing, quiet and the rage of the universe trying to right itself around her and she has little choice but to let it happen.

_Except._

Except she can’t let it happen. Whatever _it_ is, she can’t let it take her. She’s got so much work to do, so much to fight for… Her family (found family, maybe not through blood, but hers and that’s precious. They’re precious, they’re _hers_ and she has to fight for them.) She’s always been a fighter. Had never had the choice to be soft and vulnerable. It was always her fight, her life, her destiny to be a fighter. But now… she has people to fight for, fight with. People who she can be soft and vulnerable with. Finn floats to the surface of her, through the veil of darkness that is bearing down on her in all directions. The feeling her brings her - the kindness in his eyes, the open wonder, the awe and beauty that she senses when he’s near breaks through, crashes over her like tidal waves, leaving her breathing sharp staccato breaths that are dragged from her lungs in angry short bursts. She tries to think, push back against the darkness even as it presses in further, blinding her to reality. 

She blinks and the world is in front of her, bright and alive and so incredibly tangible. She can feel the vibrations of the universe, the emotions of the Resistance flicker in her mind like candles in a church, the Force floods her system sending her to her knees, overwhelming and almost too much to handle. Someone is wailing, the sound torn from their lungs and it takes a moment to realise thatthe sound is coming from her. It takes a moment longer for her to be able to bring herself to stop. 

Kylo hasn’t moved from where he was standing, but he’s sunk to his knees, watching her carefully and she thinks that he’s looking at her with something like pride in his gaze. 

“What… what _was_ that? How did…?” Her words get tangled in her throat, trapped in the webs of confusions that are weaving around her mind. She understands that she’s new to the Force, understands that there are things that she will not learn until years have passed, understands that were are things that she will never know, never master, never control… She understands all of this and yet the fact that not two minutes ago Kylo had her suspended in the Force, little more than an empty vessel for it to course through… It takes her breath away.

Shock and awe.

Kylo moves, slowly and deliberately, like he’s approaching a frightened animal who has been backed into a corner, slowly he settles into front of her, long legs folding underneath himself and he rests his hands on his knees, palms up in a sign of peace. 

“You’re crying,” he murmurs and looks down and it’s only then that she even realises that her cheeks are wet, that her eyes are stinging with unshed saltwater. She doesn’t move to brush the tears away, feels that somehow that would be cheating herself of this moment, this experience. Whatever it was that Kylo did, however terrifying it was, however strange and surreal, she knows that it was important. That what she’s feeling, the shock and the overwhelming need to reach out and connect on a tangible level with everyone that she loves is necessary. It’s vital that she feels every moment of it. Finn comes to mind again, his kindness and his strength. The bond they share, the trust and the beauty that they find in each other is like nothing she has known before and she wants to find him now, to tell him, to promise him that she’ll always return for him, that they’re eternal now and forever.

“To answer your questions… it’s known as a Force death. A sensory overload that’s almost impossible to fight.” At this Kylo looks up, a wry smile curving the corners of his lips, “The fact that you managed to… It’s very impressive.” it’s obvious to her that Kylo is still unused to handing out praise, that kindness is as a foreign language he has trouble fitting his tongue around. She understands also that he is learning, that Poe is a good teacher. “And as for how… concentration, willpower… The technicalities aren’t important right now, what matters is what you’re feeling. Everything you feel now, you have to hold onto, have to remember. It’s what will keep you alive, what will keep you grounded.”

“Finn…”

Kylo nods, and though he smiles, his eyes sad and lost. Poe is never too far from his thoughts, a shade that trails Kylo through the Resistance halls during the day and into his bed at night. Gathering her strength, she reaches over, clasps his wrists and forces him to meet her gaze, hoping that he can see, can feel, can understand her conviction, her loyalty, her honesty when she says, voice strained and breaking around the edges, “We’ll find him. I promise you, we will.”

Kylo watches her for a moment, twists his hands so that they’re gripping onto each other, the only buoyant things in a sea of uncertainty. 

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a bit of a weird one (and a short one too, I'm sorry) but hopefully it gives a little bit of extra background to the overarching plot/story. Also, I wanted to go into a little more depth with Rey and her own emotions so yesss I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Next installment! I'm so sorry for the wait, life has been stressful and writing hasn't been working properly but good news is that the next chapter of this will be up soon - hope you enjoy!


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